148 Witches’ Brooms. 
the broom are very soft and are arranged in circles, but the broom 
dies and withers after four or five years. Some of the fungi 
producing these brooms have two generations alternating between 
two plants. very species of tree that bears a broom has its own 
special gall-mite or fungus as the active agent in provoking its 
growth; and whether the agent be animal or vegetable it causes a 
rapid and unnatural bud development upon a thickened woody base. 
The Hornbeam owes its broom to the Hvoaseus carpini. 
I am aware that this is an Archeological as well as a Natural 
History Society, and therefore with this brief explanation of the 
biology of these curious structures I will turn to the archeological 
aspect of the subject, and endeavour to show how witches’ brooms 
came to possess that name, and to be mixed up with witcheraft. 
‘A belief in supernatural influence exists in every primitive 
people. Wherever the sun rises in the east to sink in the west, 
and, putting on the cap of darkness, travels back through the 
unknown land until he comes to the east again, those who watch 
him develop the idea of another world. And wherever men 
dream and hold converse with those who have passed away, they 
people that unknown land with the spirits of the departed, and 
believe that when those spirits have left that western shore, where 
the sun goes down, they still watch over and care for the living. 
The dead chief watches over his tribe, and the father over his 
children, to see that they act justly to each other. If a Zulu were 
to ill-treat his brother he believes that his father’s spirit would 
come to him in a dream and injure him. Every unaccountable 
circumstance is referred by the primitive mind to this ghostly 
interference. A child while teething has convulsions—the spirit 
father has sent a demon to rend the child. It is to remind its 
parents of something they have omitted to do, and they offer a 
meat offering and a drink offering that these may rise in a cloud 
to the offended spirit. The sacrifice is offered, the evil spirit is 
exorcised, and the child recovers. 
One of the oldest records existing is a memorial tablet preserved 
in the Bibliothéque in Paris. It belongs to the time of Rameses 
XII., and is about three thousand years old. It tells us that the 
